Job openings in America are near a record high

There were 5.757 million openings in March, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Labor Turnover
Survey (or JOLTS.)

Economists had estimated that there were 5.45 million job
openings according to Bloomberg.

The March print is second only to the high of 5.788 million
recorded last July.

"The number of job openings is not a reliable
short-term leading indicator of payrolls, but
it does suggest that employers remain very keen
to hire, consistent with our view that the
below-consensus April payroll number will prove afluke," said Pantheon Macroeconomics' Ian
Shepherdson.

Openings were fewer in retail trade, education and wholesale
trade. Hires fell slightly to 5.3 million, and there were 5
million total separations, which includes quits, layoffs and
discharges.

The JOLTS report, one of Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen's
favorites on the labor market, also included the quits rate,
which held steady at 2.1%, just under the decade high of
2.2%.

The quits rate is an indication of how confident workers are
in finding new jobs if they resign.

Friday's jobs
report for April showed that nonfarm payrolls grew by a
below-consensus 160,000. It indicated that even though
some companies slowed hiring on economic growth concerns,
the pool of unemployed workers kept shrinking
as the economy neared full
employment.

Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post flagged
this chart, which shows that the number of unemployed per job
opening has fallen to a post-recession low:BLS